In the wake of Dave Salovesh’s tragic death in April, I participated in the #RedCupProject to honor the progressive activism for which Dave was known for. Of the five locations that my “cup buddy” ANC commissioner Corey Holman and I placed red cups alongside unprotected bikeways - four now have at least some protection in the form of flex posts.

Of these, the most recent and dramatic transformation was on the 1200 block of First Street, SE in Navy Yard, DC. What was once the most habitually blocked bikeways in DC, has now become the envy of most bikeways in the District.

How do I know that this bikeway was one of the most habitually blocked? Because in addition to being a Red Cup Project participant and frequent visitor to the area, I’m the co-founder of the How’s My Driving app (HMD), a new tool that allows vulnerable road users to easily report dangerous driving behavior like standing in a bikeway or blocking a crosswalk. The app now integrates directly with some government services like the DC Department of For-Hire Vehicles’ complaint system for taxis and ride-hailing vehicles.

Analyzing app data from early April to the installation of the 1200 First Street, SE bikeway on Aug. 12, app users in DC submitted 10,693 dangerous driving reports, of which 3,363 (32%) were for bikeway blockages. Of these bikeway blockages, 147 (4.4%) were on the 1200 block of First St alone—ranking 2nd of all blocks with bikeway blockage submissions in DC.

A month has now passed since the bikeway installation, so let’s see what percentage of bikeway blockages the 1200 block of First Street, SE represents now:

There has not been a single bikeway violation (or any violation for that matter) submitted on the 1200 block of First Street, SE since the bikeway was installed (indicated in the graph above by the vertical red line).

Especially given that the How’s My Driving app is in beta testing and currently has a limited number of users, the data presented here does not even begin to tell the whole story. But it’s important to acknowledge that this data has never been collected in a systematic way before and without it, such a compelling infrastructure efficacy story cannot be told.

Using this case study, DDOT could use How’s My Driving app data to drive block-by-block changes throughout the city — 14th and Irving streets, NW, you’re next!

Why is I-95 named I-95? What about I-395, or I-270, or I-66? There’s a logical system behind it all, and it’s easy to learn.

First, how many digits

The number of digits tells you whether an interstate connects multiple metro areas, or exists solely within a single metro area. One and two-digit interstates span multiple regions, while three-digit interstates are more local. The rest of the system flows from this most basic starting point.

The one/two-digit system

There are three factors that go into determining the number for a two-digit interstate:

East-west roads get even numbers, while north-south roads get odd.

The lowest numbers begin in the south and west, and get higher as you progressively move north and east.

The most important cross-country interstates get numbers divisible by five, meaning they end in zero or five.

Thus, for example, the name I-95 was reserved for the farthest east major national cross-country interstate that traverses a north-south route. Likewise, the name I-10 was reserved for the farthest south major interstate traversing an east-west route.

You can see how it works on this map, illustrating only the “zero” and “five” major interstates:

Image by the author.

The smaller two-digit interstates — those ending in digits besides zero or five — do follow the same geographic east-west / north-south rule, but much more loosely. Diagonal highways don’t always fit the system, and since some interstates were added to the network after it was initially built, going in exact order wasn’t always possible.

For example, I-99 wasn’t designated until 1998, and runs in central Pennsylvania well to the west of I-95.

The short and inglorious I-99, shown in red. Public domain image.

Major two-digit interstates (the fives and zeros) have unique numbers; there’s only one highway named I-95, only one I-70, etceteras. But the smaller two-digiters can repeat as long as they’re far apart from each other. For example, there are separate I-76s in Pennsylvania and Colorado, and separate I-87s in New York and North Carolina.

There are a few very short two-digit interstates that probably should have gotten three-digit numbers instead. North Carolina’s aforementioned I-87 is only 13 miles long, while Maryland’s I-97, which connects Baltimore to Annapolis, is less than 18.

The three-digit system

Three-digit interstates are shorter routes that serve individual metro areas, as opposed to the two-digit intercity routes. They connect to longer two-digit routes, and act as beltways, spurs, or connectors. There are two factors that go into three-digit numbering:

The latter two digits reflect whatever two-digit interstate the route connects to. For example, I-395 connects to I-95, and I-270 connects to I-70.

The first digit reflects the purpose of the road. Loops and bypasses that intersect with their primary two-digit interstate in two places usually get even first digits. Spurs and connectors that only intersect once usually get odd first digits.

Three-digit interstate naming system. Public domain image.

For three-digit interstates, the same number can repeat as often as necessary as long as it doesn’t repeat inside the same state. For example there are seven different I-395s, and four different I-270s. Notice that both Baltimore and Washington have their own spur I-395, but Baltimore doesn’t have an I-495 because Washington’s Beltway enters Maryland.

There are of course numerous exceptions. Maryland’s I-270 is a particular troublemaker: Why should a spur connecting to I-70 at only one location get an even first digit instead of an odd? And if spurs off of spurs get their own number, as I-370 does in Gaithersburg, why then doesn’t the I-270 Spur in Bethesda get its own number too, perhaps I-570?

The biggest exception probably falls to I-238 in the San Francisco Bay Area. There’s no I-38 and thus there should be no I-238. I-238 is a connector between I-580 and I-880, each in turn spurs off of I-80. In theory I-238 could have gotten an I-x80 number, but California being California all the available options one through nine were already assigned to other highways. Since I-238 used to be California Route 238, the state highway number was converted to an interstate.

Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico

Despite having no direct land connections to the rest of the United States, Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico all have interstate highways. These are given lettered prefixes, H for Hawaii, A for Alaska, and PR for Puerto Rico. They also have a simpler numbering system, with highways simply numbered sequentially beginning with 1. Hawaii’s first interstate is H1, Alaska’s A1, and Puerto Rico’s PR1.

These can have three-digit spurs, though H201 is the only such example.

Many people still assume kids belong in the suburbs, where they’ve got yards to play in and great schools to learn in. But good, urban neighborhoods can produce good kids as well.

Twenty years ago, sociologist Ray Oldenburg wrote in “The Great, Good Place” that teenagers are a litmus test for a neighborhood’s “vitality”:

The adolescent houseguest, I would suggest, is probably the best and quickest test of the vitality of the neighborhood; the visiting teenager in the subdivision soon acts like an animal in a cage. He or she paces, looks unhappy or uncomfortable, and by the second day is putting heavy pressure on the parents to leave. There is no place to which they can escape and join their own kind. There is nothing for them to do on their own.

What do teenagers need? The ability to get around without a driver’s license, for starters. A 15-year-old who can get around town on foot, on transit, or by bike or skateboard isn’t just a convenience for their parents, who don’t have to shuttle them around after school. They’re given the tools for their own independence and self-discovery.

So the ideal place for a teenager is probably a neighborhood with sidewalks and bike lanes, ample public transit, and one which has schools, shops, and hangouts located within close range to home. That sounds a lot like Takoma Park, Bethesda, or below-the-Beltway Silver Spring. Rockville, with its new town center and excellent bike network, isn’t far behind.

For a child, having increasing opportunities to navigate the world around them, explore, invent, fall down, scrape knees, make decisions, screw up, get into — and solve — conflicts and, ultimately, achieve a sense of personal identity and self-sufficiency is a good thing. The right thing.

Of course, kids who can actually get around on their own two feet might do some unsavory things. Some of the kids who walk to downtown Bethesda, for instance, might’ve gone to buy drugs at the movie theatre on Wisconsin Avenue. But it’s not like the car-bound kids in Germantown and Olney weren’t doing that, and it’s a lot harder to hide destructive behaviors when you’re not in a two-ton vehicle.

Kids talking on a stoop in Kentlands. Image by the author.

The first time I was allowed to go anywhere by myself was at age eight, when my family lived in Georgian Towers in downtown Silver Spring. I was only taking the elevator from our apartment to the lobby, but I was so excited I screamed the whole way down. Pretty soon, I could walk to my friends’ apartments, across the street to Woodside Park, around the corner to 7-Eleven, and so on. This ended a few years later when we moved to Calverton, where there’s very little within walking distance. But I still knew that I had the power to do things on my own.

My 12-year-old brother, meanwhile, has spent his entire life in Calverton. When he’s not at school, he’s at home playing video games, but I’ve noticed he doesn’t have a close group of friends because they don’t live nearby. Last year, I took him to walk with my former boss, Councilmember Leventhal in a parade in Kentlands, one of Montgomery County’s few truly walkable neighborhoods.

“Isn’t this great, Tyler?” I asked as I took him around Kentlands’ Main Street, where we could see kids ducking into shops and hanging out in a little green. “Kids your age who live in this neighborhood can walk to school, to friends’ houses, and to the movies! Wouldn’t you like that?”

Tyler looked at me like I’d said the sky was green. “Why would I want to walk?” he replied. “Mom and Dad can just drive me there.”

Outside Blair High School on University Boulevard. Kids who have to walk in a place like this likely can’t wait to drive. Image by the author.

We talk about how urban neighborhoods are drawing young adults and senior citizens alike. But they have a lot to offer kids and teenagers, as well. That’s the great part about good urbanism: It can work for everyone, regardless of age or situation.

Ward 8 residents have long expressed frustration over lack of information about transportation projects in the area and government processes that seem opaque. Now several local advisory neighborhood commissioners are puttting together a group to close the communication gap and help residents be more informed and engaged.

ANC commissioners in Anacostia, Fort Stanton, Hillsdale, and Fairlawn are in the process of appointing several residents to a new transportation committee. Appointments started in August 2019, and will continue until all resident committee seats are filled.

“There was an opportunity for more resident input,” Ty’on Jones, an 8A06 ANC commissioner and treasurer, told me in a phone interview. “And we thought it was important to reactivate these committees…Our biggest goal was to allow for additional community engagement, which is sometimes rare in our community.”

The transportation committee will consist of seven appointed residents along with the seven ANC commissioners. Each of the seven commissioners in 8A gets to appoint one resident for each of six committees, which include The ABRA Committee, which covers alcohol and beverage control issues; the Economic Development Committee, covering zoning and development; the Public Safety Committee; Education Committee; and the Community Outreach Committee.

The transportation committee will be crucial in working with key agencies like the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) on the day-to-day issues of transportation, infrastructure, and policies, Jones said. He hopes the committee can “become educated on how transportation affects our residents, and also what we can do as commissioners to be more educated and proactive.”

According to the ANC 8A bylaws, committee members will serve for one year in the appointed position. One commissioner will serve as a liaison to help residents get acclimated to the ANC office and answer any questions, Jones said.

Transportation matters

Sidney L. Woods, a Hillsdale resident, shared how transportation in the area impacts his life every day. While he drives to work, his wife usually takes Metro or the Circulator bus to her job. “I want to make sure she is safe,” Woods told me by phone.

“Transportation is an integral part of a lot of development going on in Ward 8,” Woods said. “I have seen a lot of things happen in the ward where a lack of information causes a disruption….It’s all about sharing information.”

Road safety has been a concern for many DC residents, but particularly for some living east of the Anacostia River. As we have covered on the blog, residents here are disproportionately impacted by dangerous infrastructure as well as other safety issues. Over the last Memorial Day weekend, two simultaneous vigils were held for both victims of gun violence and pedestrians killed by drivers.

Jones hopes a key focus for the transportation committee will be infrastructure, especially on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE. “There have been a lot of concerns about the pavement, and the parking,” Jones said. “We know there were a lot of concerns about four-way stop signs.”

“We want to see some of the infrastructure built up so we feel safe,” Jones added.

Lauren Wolfe, an Anacostia resident who will also serve on the committee, told me via email, “I wanted to join the transportation committee because I have been disappointed by the lack of safe sidewalks, the difficulty of crossing MLK and Good Hope as a pedestrian, and I am very frustrated with the bus to subway transfer charge.”

“Bus service needs to be more reliable in general and run more frequently,” Wolfe added.

Image of the revitalization plan on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE Image by DDOT.

Lots of projects in the pipeline

DDOT is revitalizing Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE from South Capitol Street to Milwaukee Place. Phase one, which will cover 4th Street to Milwaukee Place SE, is a $9 million project that’s part of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Vision Zero initiatives.

Five new traffic lights and a HAWK pedestrian signal will be added, as well as an Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant ramp for people on wheels, better sidewalks, drainage, and a new median. Construction is supposed to begin in the spring of 2020.

With several transportation projects starting, wrapping up, or in the middle of construction, in Ward 8, a committee like this is critical to helping residents understand and weigh in on what is happening. If you’re interested in learning more, head to the next 8A ANC meeting on October 1.

The intersection of Florida and New York Avenue, or “Dave Thomas Circle” as it is colloquially known, is dangerous and confounding to all who use it. The District has been trying to figure out how to unravel this traffic nightmare and make it safer for people traveling via all modes. A team of experts proposes slowing cars, adding safer links for cyclists and pedestrians, and putting a lot more emphasis on the central public space.

In June, the NoMa Business Improvement District and NoMa Parks Foundation sponsored and hosted an Urban Land Institute (ULI) Technical Assistance Panel which spent two days studying the intersection. These panels are a resource for regional planning entities to receive “honest, unbiased answers to land use and real estate questions that defy easy solutions.”

The panel’s report, which was released in August, reimagines the intersection as a public space that connects neighborhoods rather than dividing them. ULI’s vision for the intersection would prioritize the safe passage of pedestrians and cyclists traveling north/south and east/west and would create spaces that would draw people to the intersection rather than turn them away. The big question now is how many of ULI’s recommendations DDOT will adopt.

The panel’s starting point was Concept 6, which has become DDOT’s working plan for the intersection. At an open house this April, DDOT laid out an accelerated timeline for the project that would see construction start in the spring of 2021. That timeline is ambitious, but there are reasons to take it seriously. In June, the DC Council approved the mayor’s request for $35 million in funding over six years to redesign Dave Thomas Circle.

DDOT's Concept 6 for Dave Thomas Circle. Image by DDOT.

The ULI panel proposes major pedestrian and cyclist safety enhancements

The ULI panel adopted a “safety first” principle, and it resulted in a refreshingly matter-of-fact adoption of elements that pedestrian and bicycle advocates in the city have long called for. If DDOT adopted them in whole, Concept 6 could evolve into a truly state-of-the-art facility. Here’s a quick rundown of the biggest improvements:

1. Include crosswalks on every side of every intersection.

The panel proposed adding the missing crosswalk at First Street and New York Avenue and straightening the north-south bike lane so that it doesn’t jog back and forth across First Street and Eckington Place. The panel recommended that these crosswalks feature generous timing to ensure pedestrians don’t get stranded at medians and leading pedestrian phases, in which the pedestrian signal turns green before the vehicle signals do so drivers are more likely to see and stop for people walking.

From a cycling standpoint, the most important missing feature of Concept 6 is its lack of an east-west route through the intersection. Such a path would close a major gap in the bike lane network between the protected bikeway DDOT is installing on Florida Avenue NE and the Q and R street one-way bike lanes that currently dead-end at Florida Avenue NW.

Concept 6’s proposal to add a protected bikeway around the southeast corner of the intersection next to the ATF building is aesthetically pleasing but adds relatively little to the protected bike lane network. A cyclist coming up First Street can access Florida Avenue and the MBT trail via the M street NE protected bikeway. Local organizations including the Eckington Civic Association and ANC 6E have asked DDOT to close that gap.

3. Manage automobile speed with road design and enforcement.

The panel recommended that speed cameras be deployed in both directions to deter speeding—a factor in many of the violent crashes that have occurred at the intersection. It also recommended some design changes that would help slow vehicles, like eliminating exclusive right-turn lanes and the addition of visual cues on New York Avenue to give drivers the perception that they are travelling faster than they are (and therefore encourage them to slow down).

4. Pilot off-peak parking on New York Avenue.

One of the panel’s most intriguing (and perhaps least-obvious) safety proposals was to explore off-peak parking on New York Avenue. As with many of our streets that are designed for peak vehicle use during the AM and PM rush hours, the road is most unsafe not when it is full, but rather when it is empty.

Off-peak parking is a cheap way to narrow the road at times when vehicle volume doesn’t demand the entire right-of-way. A narrower road encourages safer speeds. Parked vehicles also enhance safety (and perceived safety) by providing a buffer between pedestrians and vehicle lanes.

Plus, the new curbside space could conceivably be used for food trucks that are popular in NoMa. The rapiddevelopment of property near the circle suggests that a pop-up rideshare drop off/pick up zone could also be a good use of space

A major component of the Panel’s work was to envision how the spaces created by Concept 6 could be assets to nearby communities. These portions of the report have less to do with recommending changes to DDOT’s working plan and more to do with creating a vision for public space that is compatible with the overarching plan.

The circle was long ago identified by NoMa BID as an opportunity for a “gateway” art installation, much like the chicken and egg sculptures that the BID recently installed at N Street and New York Avenue, except on a grander scale.

Doing justice to the ULI panel’s ideas for placemaking is an impossible task, so I’ll stick to a few big observations.

The first is that they envisioned a place that could be an attractive destination that supports community and commercial activity rather than an inhospitable pass-through point. Public spaces can coexist with busy roads. The Columbia Heights Civic Plaza and the Park at City Center are two such examples.

While Dave Thomas Circle is not currently bordered by buildings that activate the streetscape, the pace of development in NoMa, Eckington, and Union Market suggests that that could change dramatically in the next 10 years. The panel advocates for infrastructure that anticipates that change.

The second is that the panel proposed building First Street in way that allows it to be closed temporarily so that the left and center spaces can be converted into one, large space for larger events, such as a weekend farmer’s market or food truck festivals. The ability to convert this space to prioritize community gatherings over vehicular mobility would be a major amenity and would help attract people to this space.

Third, the panel came up with inventive ways to beautify the space, including planting more trees; introducing a large, vertical art installation at the center of the circle; and using the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms building as a canvas for projected art displays.

DDOT will dictate how much of this vision becomes a reality

At the end of the day, DDOT’s engineers and planners will have the final say on whether to adopt the ULI panel’s recommendations. DDOT deserves praise for participating in the panel and being receptive to ideas for potential modifications to a concept at a time when it is trying to accelerate the design process. The agency’s recent installation of interim safety improvements on Florida Avenue NE potentially portend a greater emphasis on pedestrian and cyclist safety than Concept 6 reflects.

The redesign of Dave Thomas Circle is an enormous opportunity for DDOT to transform one of the most dangerous intersections in the city to an active space that brings neighborhoods together. Opportunities to reshape an urban landscape this dramatically do not happen every day, and they are important to get right because the next opportunity to get it right may be decades away. That’s why DDOT should adopt ULI’s refinements to Concept 6, and area residents, urbanists, and multimodal proponents should be prepared to advocate for them throughout the design process.

Freeways are a scourge on the urban fabric, and the communities urban freeways run through usually do not see any of the benefits proponents claim will come with the new infrastructure. They produce more traffic, break up neighborhoods, degrade the surrounding environment, and displace existing communities.

Plus, they make cities more reliant on automobility, which is not only terrible for the environment but also negatively impacts traffic for the entire metropolitan area. This topic hits close to home for just about any North American city.

The “Cities:Skylines - Power, Politics & Planning” video from Youtuber donoteat01 offers a crash course in the destructive nature of urban freeways. In it, the narrator creates a hypothetical for the construction of an urban freeway similar to many of the unbuilt freeways planned for Washington, DC. It is part of a series illustrating urban issues using the popular PC game Cities: Skylines, along with a hefty dose of sardonic commentary.

Real-world examples used in the video include freeway revolts in Washington, DC and the negative impacts of US-40 in Baltimore. What are your thoughts on urban freeways and how they are portrayed in this video?

On August 21, approximately 30 volunteers took positions along the new H and I Streets NW bus-only lanes to get a sense of how often other vehicles block them. They recorded nearly 300 violations using the How’s My Driving app during the morning and evening rush hour periods.

The project, which we dubbed the Data Informed Bus Lane Blitz, drew inspiration from the Data Protected Bike Lane Project, in which 70+ volunteers fanned out across DC in May and captured 700 bike lane violations. This time around the action was prompted by Rebecca Watson, a How’s My Driving (HMD) user and regular bus rider.

Watson generally loves the new H/I Street NW bus lanes, but has seen enforcement decrease and violations increase since the bus lane pilot started in June. She reached out to the HMD team requesting some kind of collective action to highlight the bus lane issues she sees every day—and the Blitz was on!

Tracking “the Blitz” in real time

Throughout the day, the real-time dashboard tracked the project’s collective progress.

We found that 26% percent of vehicles reported had an outstanding parking/speed camera citation. This phenomenon aligns with the 31% of vehicles with outstanding citations associated with the over 12,000 HMD app submissions reported since it began beta testing in January.

For the Blitz, the average citation value was $148, and the highest single vehicle total was a whopping $7,700!

Diving into the data

Bus lane violations captured were fairly evenly split between AM/PM rush with 148 violations and 141, respectively. But with a look at violations split out geographically and by vehicle type (ride-hail/taxi, private, commercial), a clearer story around bus lane violations begins to emerge.

Two blocks accounted for 43% of all violations captured throughout the Blitz—1500 H Street and 1700 I Street.

1500 H Street NW is directly in front of Lafayette Park (i.e. the White House). Of the 67 violations captured on 1500 H St, 51% were ride-hail/taxis, and our volunteers stationed there observed ride-hail (Uber/Lyft) vehicles picking up and dropping off tourists (sometimes the same vehicle multiple types!) This also explains why the majority of this block’s violations were in the afternoon, as opposed to morning rush.

1700 I Street NW doesn’t have as clear a story to tell, but is pretty much the center of downtown DC. Again, this block had a greater than 50% share of violations for ridehailing/taxis.

Taxis are allowed to drive in the lanes, but they can’t pick up or drop off in them. The highest volume of violations came from taxis and ride-hailing vehicles at 46%, but a simple count violations by vehicle type doesn’t tell the whole story.

By looking at violations by vehicle type and vehicle status (loading, standing, and parked), another dynamic develops. Commercial vehicles have the largest share of parking violations, while private and ride-hail/taxis an increasingly higher share of loading and standing violation.

So while ride-hail/taxis had over double the number of individual violations, each commercial vehicle violation was likely more impactful. A commercial vehicle loading has a very different connotation than a taxi loading in terms of likely durations.

The actual impact

In order to try to visualize the actual impact, How’s My Driving app co-founder Daniel Schep put together this time-lapse animation of all 289 bus lane violations.

Some key assumptions:

All parking and commercial loading violations lasted 10 minutes

Standing violations lasted five minutes

Private and ride-hail/taxi loading violations lasted one minute

Using the same assumptions, now let’s see what percentage of time each bus lane block was blocked by violations as a percentage of total effective bus lane time.

As expected, 1700 I Street NW and 1500 H Street NW are still the most problematic blocks, with both being blocked nearly 65% of the time the bus lanes were in effect for the day. Interestingly, they switched positions with 1700 I Street NW having more parking and standing violations compared to 1500 H Street NW.

The biggest takeaway: All those “just a minute” violations really add up, to the point where the bus lanes are blocked a least a third of the effective hours for the majority of the blocks we monitored as part of the Blitz.

Lessons learned

With the bus lane pilot officially ending September 2, it will be interesting to see what changes, if any, DDOT will make. The bus lanes are great, but there is room for improvement.

Based on data we collected from the bus lane blitz and collective observations made by volunteers throughout the day, here are our top three recommendations for DDOT:

Block-by-block improvements. 43% of bus lane blitz violations were captured on just two blocks (1500 H and 1700 I). Improving lane infrastructure on just those two lanes may have a disproportionately positive impact .

Less confusing hours. I can’t tell you how many drivers I saw park their cars and try and feed the meter when the bus lanes were in effect. Continuous effective hours for the bus lanes like 7 am-7 pm M-F and better signage would go a long way.

Better infrastructure. Options include beginning or middle of block flex posts or double white lines like on the Georgia Avenue bus lanes (photo below) to make it more clear that merging in and out of the lane is not appropriate.

We first published this article on March 24, 2016. The history is still interesting, so we’re sharing it again!

In the 1940s, there was a proposal to make East Capitol Street into a wide, monumental avenue. This map shows what it would look like, and provides some other glimpses into what DC was like at the time.

I spotted the map in a recent Washington Post story about cartographer Pat Easton painting it on his dining room wall via a projector. One glance shows how different the DC it depicts is from how DC looks today.

Today, East Capitol Street is a typical Capitol Hill street: It isn’t very wide, and most of the buildings along the street are small. The map shows an East Capitol that looks like the National Mall continuing east past the Capitol building and stretching to the Anacostia River.

It turns out the map was drawn up by the National Capital Park and Planning Commission (NCPC) in 1941. It details proposals that would have incorporated much of the land between Constitution Avenue NE and Independence Avenue SE into new space for federal and District government buildings. The Library of Congress has a copy of the map on its website, where you can zoom in and see many of the details.

One of the most notable things is how many of the (now historic) buildings along East Capitol Street today would have been razed to make room for wider streets and office buildings. The corners of Lincoln Park in Capitol Hill would have been rounded off to make the space shaped more like an oval, and Independence and Constitution Avenues would have been widened to include some freeway-like sections along with tunnels underneath the Capitol Building itself. That would have meant that the roads stayed very wide for their entire length across the city.

Had all of this this happened, East Capitol would probably look similar to today’s Independence Avenue SW near the USDA Complex.

Other details I notice are that there is a stadium near where RFK stadium sits today, along with other athletic facilities, including tennis courts and an indoor swimming pool.

There’s also no bridge across the Anacostia River. Instead, Consitution and Independence Avenues both veer off the map, traveling along the Anacostia’s western shore. That’s obviously different from today, as we now have the Whitney Young Memorial Bridge.

It also looks like there where plans for a new railroad bridge and tunnel that would cross the Anacostia closer to today’s RFK site and, presumably, link up with the current right of way near L’Enfant Plaza.

And of course, since this map was drawn in 1941, there are no interstate highways cutting through the southwest and southeast quadrants of the city, and Constitution Avenue dead ends at the Potomac rather than leading to today’s Roosevelt Bridge.

Readers: What do you notice in the map?

Top image: 1941 NCPC Plan for East Capitol Street. Image by Library of Congress.

]]>Wed, 28 Aug 2019 15:30:00 +0000Canaan Merchant (Elections Committee)Tysons was built around cars. How can it transform into a place people can walk?https://ggwash.org/view/73554/walk-a-mile-in-tysons-shoes-fairfax-virginia-transportation-future
https://ggwash.org/view/73554/walk-a-mile-in-tysons-shoes-fairfax-virginia-transportation-future

Tysons wants to transform from a suburban office park into a bona-fide city filled with more residents, even more jobs, and culture and activities. According to its comprehensive plan, Tysons is aiming to become “a true urban downtown for Fairfax County” by 2050. But the question on a lot of people’s minds is how they will get there, and how they will get around within the four-square-mile area.

Right now, it’s really hard to walk or bicycle around Tysons. The “edge city” mushroomed during the age of the jet and the highway, and it was built for cars, not people walking or bicycling. But a walkable place tends to be a hospitable one, and walkability in Tysons is a major ingredient in creating a successful urban center where people want to stay to live and play.

“Walkability is key to our future transportation network,” says Tom Biesiadny, Director of the Fairfax County Department of Transportation (FCDOT). “It’s integral to the multi-model approach we are taking to our transportation system. It’s the ability to get from the office, to go to lunch, to get your dry cleaning, to get home; it’s critical to everything we’re doing.”

Walkability is the future

Biesiadny heads the department for all of Fairfax County, but he understands Tysons’ specific needs. The county conducted a transportation analysis as part of the plan amendment approved in 2010, and found walkability was an area that needs improvement.

“We have to have the ability to walk, as well as drive and take transit,” Biesiadny says. “Tysons isn’t going to work if the only way to get around town in Tysons is to get in your car and drive across the street. There has to be a viable, workable, efficient pedestrian network.”

To that end, Biesiadny says the FCDOT has spent about $300 million to date on pedestrian improvements around the county, which includes bicycle, pedestrian, and bus stop improvement projects to date. We reached out to the county to find out how much was spent in Tysons specifically, and will update the article when we receive that information.

“Tysons is transforming in a way that is great. With the Silver Line coming through, it’s opened up a lot of possibilities,” says Sonya Breehey, Northern Virginia Advocacy Manager for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, which promotes walkable, inclusive, transit-oriented communities in the region. She says Tysons had the advantage of a comprehensive plan that detailed walkability improvements.

Breehey, who also serves on the board of the Fairfax Alliance of Better Bicycling, sees firsthand the changes and challenges of creating walking and bicycle-friendly spaces.

“There is a great vision for reinventing Tysons,” Breehey says, but said when transitioning into a more walkable place: “There will be bumps along the way. There are very wide roads that focus on moving cars and keeping that flow going. So having wide roadways for pedestrians and cyclists to cross upon can be unsafe, [and] very uncomfortable, because it’s quite a stretch if you’re out in the sun in the heat of summer or the cold of winter.”

Breehey points to the recently-completed sidewalk on along Route 7 under Route 123 as a milestone for better walkability and improved access for bicyclists. However, she says there are still a lot of ramp crossings, especially near the Beltway and near major intersections, with high-speed right-hand turns that “present some serious conflict points for ped and cyclists that are trying to use the shared path.”

Local developers have walkability requirements

Fairfax County’s transportation demand management guidelines have requirements for reducing auto trips in Tysons. For instance, if development in Tysons reaches overall square footage of 65 million (in 2018 Tysons had 52.2 million square feet), properties between 0 and 1/8 mile from Metro need to reduce their auto trips by 45%. The closer a development is to Metro, the more requirements it has to fulfill, plus those requirement rachet up as the 2050 deadline gets closer.

“The thought is that as Tysons becomes more urban, [these requirements] become more achievable,” says Justin B. Schor. Schor is principal at Wells + Associates, a company the Tysons Partnership brought in to help local developers and properties meet standards set out in the comp plan to reduce the number of auto trips in the area.

In order to help developments create more walkable spaces, Schor says the company has several different approaches, including trying to get commuters and residents to consider walking instead of driving.

“In some instances, it’s a younger demographic that’s looking to say, commute to Arlington. So we will target those folks with a message on how to walk most safely and effectively to Metro,” Schor said. “Other instances we’ll create an access guide that says ‘hey, welcome to the neighborhood,’ adding things that are within walking distance within a half-mile of their building. We really try to get people to understand that so they can go either car-light or car-free.”

But what makes an area walkable?

Walkability is so important that future of Tysons may depend on whether people can safely and easily get around on foot. But how do you know if an area is walkable?

Andrew Mondschein, a professor in the Department of Urban and Environmental planning in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, may have some answers. He has been teaching there for six years, and has been studying walkability in Tysons for about as long.

“I’ve been studying walkability since the year after I arrived in Virginia,” Mondschein said. “It’s such an important project and example of trying to transform an American suburban area into something that is totally different, into something that is not only dense but is also friendly to travel modes other than driving.”

Like many people I have spoken to, Mondschein emphasizes how unique Tysons’ transformation is, and how important its success or failure will be.

“There’s examples of this everywhere, but in terms of truly moving from pure suburban office and retail to something that is like a city, there’s few examples that are like this anywhere in the country, if not the world,” Mondschein said. “I think that is a really amazing goal the county has set for itself.”

On Dolly Madison Boulevard in Tysons, a street only has crosswalks on one side of the street. Image by the author.

How does one go about measuring walkability in the first place? That question itself is complicated, Mondschein said.

“Walkability is actually a lot of things,” Mondschein said. “It’s not just simply sidewalks, and of course if they are safe. It’s also a question of accessibility. Are there places to go when people are on foot? It’s a question of comfort. Is it the kind of street you would actually want to be on? It’s a question of health. Do you even know if you’re breathing fumes from cars or trucks? There are so many dimensions to what makes a place walkable.”

Getting multifaceted answers requires complex tools and processes. Mondschein and a crew of students and volunteers traveled to Tysons, using the same boundaries of the area in the comprehensive plan, at different times of the year. They carry sensors that can fit inside of a backpack to measure noise and pollution levels, and also track temperatures on the sidewalks.

Mondschein collects these numbers and combines them with data on accessibility, traffic, and safety to “really understand walkability in a really comprehensive way,” he said. Since 2015, he’s been mapping the area for walkability, and is reaching the point where his ongoing study can provide some substantive information.

How is Tysons doing on walkability so far?

Grading a city on plan only a quarter of the way complete in is a little unfair. But examining almost a decade of initiatives, infrastructure improvements, and developments can shed some light on how walkability is progressing.

“What I’ve seen is definite improvements in spots as far as local walkability, and we’ve also seen investments in walkability with bridges. Good things have happened,” Mondschein said. “It still does not function well as a comprehensive walkable city. It’s bigger than a neighborhood, but those neighborhoods are still very disconnected.

“And there are a lot of issues you don’t perceive unless you are on the sidewalk, like noise, and just kind of the discomfort of being on the sidewalk of large roads that are just going to be general challenges,” Mondschein adds. “It’s not to give up hope, it’s just more challenges some of which can change quickly and some of which will take time to address.”

On West Park Drive near Tysons Corner Center, it is hard to get across the street. Image by the author.

Biesiadny knows the goal of walkability in Tysons is a moving target. He points to the 2011 Tysons Metrorail Station Access Management Study for context, which lays out key transportation goals for Tysons as well as solutions, such as pedestrian walkways that cross onto the Dulles Toll Road and I-495 from Route 7 and Route 123.

The study states that “pedestrian and bicycle access into Tysons Corner is difficult and dangerous along these corridors, specifically along Route 7 from areas north of Tysons Corner and along Route 123 from areas east of Tysons Corner.” Recommendations range from enhancing crosswalk design with things like colored pavements, to adding refuge areas in medians for people trying to cross on foot, to getting permission from developers for pedestrians and bicyclists to pass through private property to get to nearby Metrorail stations.

According to Biesiadny, the county has made substantial efforts to address 29 of the 36 recommendations in the study. One of FCDOT and the Virginia Department of Transportation’s major local projects is the Jones Branch Connector, a bridge with wide sidewalks that crosses over the Capital Beltway into Tysons. They plan to add an eight- to 12-foot-wide lighted sidewalk, landscaping, and other amenities to make streets safer throughout Tysons for people bicycling and walking.

Two months of work in 1 minute at the Jones Branch Connector! Crews making serious progress on this new link across the Beltway in Tysons. Two lanes open now, sidewalk coming later this summer, everything wraps up later this year. More: https://t.co/7W2Od2jdqv#TimeLapsepic.twitter.com/Y8cebX2me2

“Between now and 2050, we are going to see ebbs and flow in growth,” Biesiadny said. “There are a lot of pieces that need to be put together. We’ve made a lot of progress, but there still is a lot that needs to be done and 30 years may seem like a long time, but it actually will be here sooner than we know it.”

Top image: Tysons was built for cars, not people walking. Route 123 in Tysons by Daniel Kelly used with permission.

How does Baltimore, a major city, lose the busiest part of its busiest transit system—light rail—for over a month during the busiest part of the summer, to the detriment of its bus system and the dismay of roughly 30% of residents who don’t own cars? The story raises as many questions as it answers about the fragility of the city’s transit, and its inability to manage major stressors and communicate key information.

It all starts with a sinkhole.

The series of unfortunate events

On July 10, 2019, Convention Center—the de facto light rail stop for Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, one of the two main stops for Camden Yards, and one of the busiest stops in Baltimore’s Light Rail system—very abruptly went underground.

Two days earlier, a water main break beneath Howard Street had flooded much of the area around M&T Bank Stadium, where the Baltimore Ravens play. It temporarily trapped a CSX freight train several blocks north in the Howard Street Tunnel, briefly discolored much of the water in the Inner Harbor, and indirectly injured a Baltimore City Department of Transportation employee after a wall partially collapsed while he was doing electrical work underground.

Now, in the early hours of the morning, a sinkhole at the corner of Howard and Pratt Streets had emerged and enveloped a wheelchair ramp and platform. Department of Public Works crews rushed to remove the platform and ramp but before they could succeed, they collapsed into the ground. Downtown bus routes were diverted and light rail was immediately and indefinitely suspended between North Avenue and the next stop with adequate crossover placement, Convention Center’s southern neighbor, Camden Yards.

The timing couldn’t have been much worse.

Two utility workers take a break while making repairs on a main at Convention Center Light Rail Station on August 1. Image by the author.

Just over two weeks before the sinkhole emerged, the MTA had made the second of three legally-mandated service adjustments to its BaltimoreLink bus network to improve reliability. Danielle Sweeney, an organizer for the Central Maryland Transit Alliance, periodically tracks MTA bus frequency and reliability using the agency’s new performance dashboard. She noticed that based off of the percentage of buses marked “on-time,” most of the MTA’s downtown routes had finally started to adjust to the summer service changes when the sinkhole appeared.

“I did start to see a little tiny bit of an uptick before the sinkhole,” Sweeney said. “I was kind of seeing numbers in the 60s and 70s, and I was seeing a little tiny trend upward, and then BOOM!, reliability in the 40s, just in a couple of days. In some cases, you lost 25 or 30 points in a day or two.”

But the damage wasn’t limited to downtown Baltimore.

“One thing nobody talks about is how interconnected the routes are,” Sweeney said. “If the Navy [CityLink route] is really, really behind, that’s going to mess up people not just Downtown but with a lot of Southeast Baltimore and with a lot of West Baltimore. And the Red [CityLink route] goes from the University of Maryland Medical Center [in Midtown] to Towson and Lutherville [The northern half of Baltimore County]. And when you’ve got 50% of those buses late, that messes up a lot of service for a lot of people.”

Plus, there was already another set of light rail closures, these ones further north alongside I-83 in the Jones Falls Valley. They exacerbated the effects of the sinkhole closures far beyond parts of Pratt and Howard Streets and the six light rail stops along Howard Street: Mt. Royal/University of Baltimore, Cultural Center, Centre Street, Lexington Market, University Center/Baltimore Street, and Convention Center.

A fence cordons off the 400 block of West Pratt Street from repair work on the Pratt Street Sinkhole on August 1. Image by the author.

Other stops were already closed, and commuters couldn’t find the replacement bus stops

Erosion has long been a problem in and around the four stops adjacent to the Jones Falls River: Falls Road (the last light rail stop on the northern side of Baltimore County), Mt. Washington (the first light rail stop in Baltimore City heading south), Cold Spring Lane, and Woodberry (a popular stop for its proximity to the city’s popular Hampden neighborhood), especially coming out of Cold Spring Lane.

Eagle-eyed transit observers might have noticed something interesting in the Public Impacts Report posted on the MTA’s website and updated every few months. A 22-day closure (three days at Falls Road, the only one of the stops in question with enough turnaround capacity) was set to begin at those stops on July 22 to install a gabion, a type of retaining structure often used to prevent erosion. While they were at it, they would replace pedestrian crossing surfaces.

MTA Director of Media Relations Brittney Marshall said the MTA did look at the possibility of delaying the already-scheduled trackwork, but in the end, opted to stick to the original plan. “MDOT MTA evaluated alternative options for the repairs,” Marshall said, “but due to contractor availability and pre-construction work already complete, the decision was made to move forward with the repairs critical to continuing to provide safe and reliable service on the Light RailLink.”

This meant that from July 22 to August 6, when the Jones Falls segment of the line reopened a week early, every Light Rail stop between Falls Road and Camden Yards was closed. (Falls Road was also closed for the first three days to replace its track crossing points, briefly pushing one end of the closure zone 5.7 miles further north to Lutherville). It also placed further strain on the free “bus bridges” the MTA used to replace Light Rail service, buses which were likely taking away both drivers and buses from regular MTA service.

These bus bridges were absolutely essential for many commuters. There was no separate school bus fleet for the Baltimore City Public School System, and no pair of Light Rail and Metro Subway stations within a mile of each other north of Cultural Center and State Center. But you wouldn’t have understood their importance from the bus bridge “maps” on display at each light rail stop.

None of the maps listed the locations of the bus stops—even when they were as far as half a mile away from the light rail stations they were meant to replace. There was no schedule for the shuttles posted, nor any attempt to incorporate them into Transit, the bus timetable app the MTA partners with to track its usual routes. To make matters even worse, much of the closure coincided with a brutal heat wave.

Light rail closures from July 22-25, taken at University Center/Baltimore Street. Image by the author.

Communication and traffic chaos

Baltimore’s most popular arts festival, Artscape, plus a Billy Joel concert (the first standalone concert at Camden Yards), multiple Baltimore Orioles series (some even well-attended due to promotional giveaways or popular AL East opponents), both of the Baltimore Ravens’ preseason home games, and the final gathering of Bronycon all saw massive traffic backups and delays. This was partly due to street closures, partly due to people driving who would normally use the Light Rail.

Mentions of the issues and how to deal with them on local newscasts were few and far between. Even a Baltimore Sun article announcing the return of light rail service incorrectly referred to the resumption of “Commuter service at the Camden and North Avenue stops,” omitting the six light rail stops which had closed in favor of two stops which hadn’t closed at all.

Finally, at 5 am on Sunday, August 18, after 40 days of closures and despite the absence of a fully finished northbound wheelchair ramp at Convention Center, Baltimore Light Rail service resumed on Howard Street. It lasted all of eight hours. Then a Baltimore police officer attempting to respond to a bank robbery on the University of Maryland Medical Center campus crashed into another driver on the light rail tracks at the corner of Howard and Fayette Streets, exactly halfway between the Lexington Market and University Center stops.

However, trains were delayed but not suspended, and within a few hours, service was back to something resembling normal. In Baltimore, that’s called “progress.”

Correction: The worker who was injured was a Department of Transportation employee, not Department of Public Works.

After a four year hiatus, the Texas Transportation Institute has once again generated its misleading Urban Mobility Report—and it’s still wrong.

The UMR has been comprehensively debunked–it has never been peer-reviewed nor have its authors responded to authoritative critiques, it relies on a series of false premises, penalizes cities with compact development patterns and short commutes, ignores non-automobile travelers, and exaggerates all of its key claims.

City Observatory will have an updated debunking soon, but meanwhile, here’s a repost of what I write in 2011 and 2015. We’re reposting it with some edits and updates. I’ve given the report a quick look and the critique here seems to still apply, but I haven’t scrutinized the entire report.

What’s wrong with “Washington’s traffic is third worst in the nation”?

The report’s predecessors and, it seems, the current iteration look at only one factor: Whether traffic is moving fast or slow at a given time. Consider two hypothetical cities. In Denseopolis, people live within two miles of work on average, but the roads are fairly clogged and drivers can only go about 20 miles per hour. However, it only takes an average of six minutes to get to work despite always being “in traffic,” which isn’t bad.

On the other hand, in Sprawlville, people live about 30 miles from work on average, but there are lots and lots of fast-moving freeways, so people can drive 60 mph. That means it takes 30 minutes to get to work, almost none of which is “in traffic.”

Which city has worse roads? By TTI’s methods, it’s Denseopolis. But it’s the people of Sprawlville who spend more time commuting, and thus have less time to be with their families and for recreation.

For example, in the 2011 report, TTI ranked Portland as worse than Nashville, with a Travel Time Index (TTI) of 1.15 for Nashville and 1.23 for Portland. However, because of greater sprawl, Nashville commuters spent an average of 268 hours that year commuting, while the average Portland commuter spent 193 hours. It’s just that Nashville commuters weren’t in traffic as much.

Does this mean build more roads?

What does this mean for public policy and the Washington region? TTI’s data is often used to justify spending money on new freeway capacity, since congestion sounds bad. Tim Lomax, a co-author of all three reports, told the Post’s Ashley Halsey III in 2011, “You can do little things like stagger work hours, fix traffic-light timing and clear wrecks faster, but in the end, there’s a need for more capacity.”

“That we are congested is not news, but TTI’s report does tremendous damage, because they fail to recognize the primary cause of our congestion and imply that we could simply widen roads to build our way out of the problem,” said Stewart Schwartz of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, about the 2011 report.

Since 2011, statements from TTI have been slightly less roads-only in their focus, but Lomax told AP this time, “I think it is pretty clear that everything isn’t happening enough,” referring to adding capacity to the transportation system. And the report’s focus on traffic congestion for car commuters means that solutions which help some people take a different mode wouldn’t give cities credit on the total number of hours drivers spend in traffic.

The real answer is to reduce dependence on long commutes

Technology can help people get around more easily, but there are bigger-picture policies as well to help people not have to drive so far in the first place. To do that, we need to concentrate future growth around existing hubs with more residents, jobs, and multimodal transportation.

That’s what the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) has been trying to push since before the first TTI report with its Region Forward plan and the related 2010 “What Would It Take?” scenario (PDF). These involve focusing development in places like Tysons Corner and the Route 1 corridor in Fairfax, around underutilized Metro stations in Prince George’s, future ones in Loudoun, and MARC and VRE hubs in Maryland and Virginia.

Arlington achieved substantial job and resident growth in its Rosslyn-Ballston corridor without adding to traffic congestion, as has Montgomery with growth in Silver Spring and Bethesda and DC development in places like NoMA and the Capitol Riverfront area. Regional leaders should be less concerned with speeding up existing cars, which just leads to sprawl farther out, and invest more in finding ways to grow the region without adding traffic.

Washington has grown while managing congestion

In fact, that’s just what the Washington region has done. Between better location and transit, the original report showed congestion did not increase from 1999 to 2011 even on TTI’s scale. That means our region had been successfully growing without adding traffic. Instead of “Washington area tied with Chicago for traffic congestion, study finds,” which was the 2011 Post headline, it could have read, “Washington area’s traffic hasn’t gotten worse in a decade thanks to smart growth.”

In his article about the 2015 report, Halsey reported that “traffic delays in most parts of the country have bounced back to pre-recession levels.” But in Washington, the TTI report’s numbers hardly budged from 2012 to 2014, according to spreadsheets from the 2015 report. The Silver Line, which opened between the 2011 TTI report and the one in 2015, reduced traffic by 15% at some intersections while also offering many people new choices to get to work.

This time, the report focuses on total numbers of hours the median driver spends in traffic: in Washington, that’s 102 in 2017, the most recent year of data in the report. That number still appears to revolve around how much time is in “congested roads” versus “uncongested ones” as if free-flowing roads have zero negative consequence (as in Sprawlville).

Comparing years, the latest report says our region’s number rose to 102 from 99 hours in 2016, 96 in 2015, and 90 in 2012. It doesn’t say how much came from people moving to places with longer commutes or what the number is with travelers who use other modes.

The new report does seem to have a new approach in quantifying the number of hours spent in traffic rather than the percentage of time spent in traffic. A city which helps shorten people’s commutes from 30 minutes in traffic to 20 minutes in traffic, say, would indeed end up with a lower number of hours per year in traffic. But the focus remains on total “hours of delay” rather than the actual times people spend commuting, which is what really matters.

For more critiques of the TTI methodology, see City Observatory’s page. Meanwhile, I’ll set a reminder for 2023, when presumably it’ll come back again.

Mayor Muriel Bowser recently announced that a three-mile section of Georgia Avenue will be closed to automobile traffic for several hours in October for the District’s inaugural Open Streets event. Open Streets is a worldwide program that temporarily pedestrianizes streets. It’s an effort to encourage community building, more active transportation, and to help people think differently about this public space.

People first on Open Streets

More than 130 cities in North America already participate in the Open Streets program, including New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Seattle was the US first city to participate, but the concept originated in Bogotá, Colombia in 1976.

Colombia’s Ciclovias attract a million or more participants every Sunday and public holiday, when 120 km of main streets in Bogotá, Cali, Medellín, and other municipalities are closed to cars from 7 am to 2 pm. People on foot, bike, skates, and more enjoy fitness classes and musical performances. Brussels’s Open Streets event covers an area larger than the entire District of Columbia.

In DC, nearly three miles of Georgia Avenue (between Barry Place NW and Missouri Avenue NW) will be host people on foot, bicycle, scooter and more from 10 am to 2 pm. The event is part of the District’s Vision Zero pledge, and it hopes to encourage non-automobile modes of transportation.

“Open Streets is a unique event that will allow residents and businesses to reimagine public roads as community spaces and to consider new possibilities about the future of transportation and infrastructure in our city,” Bowser said in a press release. “Together, at a fun, family-friendly event, we can explore the benefits of having fewer cars on our roads.”

The program aims to democratize the use of city streets, reduce air pollution (albeit, briefly), and promote more active modes of transportation. A number of Open Streets events around the world also host vendors. DC’s event will host demonstrations, children’s activities, and bike clinics, and there are three stages for aerobics and Zumba classes, music, and more.

Some business owners have misgivings

Since people walk around rather than drive, it’s easier for them discover new local shops. A similar event in Baltimore called Fells Point Al Fresco has proven very popular with residents and local businesses alike. “We need more tables!” one restaurant owner said after the event.

That being said, at a recent public meeting some business owners on the affected section of Georgia Avenue expressed concern that closing the street to cars would mean fewer customers. One said that “the process of developing the event has been imposing and dismissive of similar events such as the Georgia Avenue Day Festivals and the Caribbean Carnivals.”

Local businesses are welcome to get involved though. Businesses can submit a plan to DDOT about how they want to use space on Georgia Avenue until Saturday, August 31, and agency is also looking for volunteers to host water stations or to allow attendees to use restrooms.

This is the area on Georgia Avenue that will host Open Streets. Image created with Google Maps.

Open Streets programs have faced some resistance from cities mostly due to their cost, but they have a net benefit from health improvements (so long as cities host them frequently enough). Plus, it’s hard to quantify the value of helping people envision another way of using public streets and bonding with their community, but it is certainly valuable.

Although smaller in scope and duration than some more established Open Streets events, the Georgia Avenue closure seems like a step in the right direction. What do you think of the Georgia Avenue event? What else do you want to see out of Open Streets in our region?

It’s back to school time for kids across the Washington region, and some families are already puzzling over the first practical exercise: How to get them there. A “walking school bus” could be the solution. It gets several kids to walk to school together (with at least one adult escort), and all it takes is a little organization, a route people can follow, and showing up.

Read on, but note: There will be a quiz.

I walk the line

Any caregiver for a kid in institutionalized education is familiar with the challenge of getting them where they’re going safely, on time, every single day, well before your own day’s assignments come into play. I’ve been doing this with mine since they were a year old. As a non-morning-person, I can only speculate this is part of how society tacitly yet mercilessly resists population growth.

Last fall, I had a problem. I cover mornings with our kids because my spouse leaves for work by 6:30 am every day. Our son was given a place at our in-bounds public elementary school, but one of the factors holding us back from taking it was the logistics. One child needed to be delivered to RFK Stadium/Kingman Park, and the other had to get to the Golden Triangle downtown, leaving me with the dreaded Divergent Dropoff scenario that no parent welcomes.

Short of driving all over town every morning while rueing my life choices, how was I going to get everyone where they needed to go, and get to work at a decent hour?

The walking school bus of Constitution Avenue came to my rescue. Local parents formed the bus in order to get their kids to the same co-located elementary and middle schools. Every morning at 8:05, the designated escort would be at the first house on the route and start walking, picking up each kid as their parents cheerily popped them out of their front doors. We used a What’s App group to stay in contact about departures, arrivals, and any kids who wouldn’t be “on the bus” that day.

Participating in this system was great for our family, and it helped make it feasible for us to send our kid to school instead of another year of expensive daycare. Aside from the practical benefits of only needing to transport one’s kid a couple times a week instead of five, families who took part enjoyed wider benefits too.

“The bus was particularly helpful for us, because more than just transport and lessening the parenting burden, it was about community,” says Stephanie Winans, a parent on our bus who had recently moved to DC. “We got to know our neighbors so much better, and our children started school with a sense of confidence that comes from being part of the community.”

Getting their 10,000 steps in (no children were made to wear FitBits as part of this exercise). Image by the author.

(How to) walk this way

How does one go about forming a walking school bus? The walking school bus website suggests starting small with a few families, a route, and a schedule. It’s easiest to begin by talking to families who live in a concentrated geographic area who need to get to the same school or co-located schools. From there, you can recruit other families who are interested in their kids taking part.

I spoke to a coordinator for our walking school bus last year, Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Amber Gove (6A04), to find out how the magic happens. She supplied some tips:

Host a playdate to recruit families (extra credit if they’re on or near a sensible route to get to school), and discuss ground rules and expectations. Putting out a call on a school or neighborhood list serve can be a good way to recruit people.

Build a Google Sheet with parent and child contact information, and a regular bus “driver” schedule that everyone can edit.

Start a WhatsApp Group with all “bus driver”/caregiver cell phone numbers, and manage all communications through that channel. Set expectations about communication, like indicating if a kid won’t be joining the bus that day. What’s App is a good option because some phones won’t facilitate large group texts.

“Bus drivers” must commit to their day and get a replacement if they can’t make it.

Pick one route, and stick to it. Kids get better (and less prone to wander) as they get familiar with a single route. This also helps the occasional latecomer.

Ground rules can include things like kids holding hands while crossing the street and roughly how the adults should position themselves. For us, a leader, caboose, and someone in the middle to carefully monitor street crossings worked well.

Day walkers. Image by Amber Gove used with permission.

Walk, don’t drive

The temptation to drive kids to school can be strong for caregivers with access to a car. But driving around schools creates all sorts of problems. The chaos of morning dropoff periods mean that children, who can be distracted, small, or both, are at risk from cars driven by people thinking about their own kids or schedules. Drivers hit four children and caregivers near DC schools in the first week of the 2018-19 school year alone, three of whom were in Ward 8.

Immediate safety aside, a long line of cars can jam up the roads, and idling vehicles also pollute the air those same kids breathe. Our bus coordinator calculated that our bus of 10 families avoided putting 2.2 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere last year by eschewing driving. It’s far better, of course, to walk, bike, or take public transport if you can. A walking school bus is one way of making the pedestrian option more feasible.

While we press our elected officials harder to design safer streets through structural programs like Safe Routes to School, walking school buses can provide protection in numbers, while kids get the benefits of starting or ending the day with a healthy walk.

We promise, kids, when the C Street NE project is finished, it will be safer to walk to school. Image by Amber Gove used with permission.

A good supplement to gym class

Most of us could use (a lot) more exercise, and for kids, it’s especially important as their bodies grow and develop. At least 60 minutes of active play per day is recommended for children aged six and older by the American Academy of Pediatrics. But DC Public Schools guidelines only mandate 20 minutes of recess per day. Something doesn’t add up.

Sure, kids could hypothetically be getting physical activity at other times of day. But the time available for exercise outside the school day is limited, especially for kids whose caregivers work and who may spend time in aftercare once the final bell has rung. A walking school bus builds outdoor activity into the beginning or end of every day.

Weather may be less of a barrier than you think: Through all of the last school year, the group only shifted to carpool one morning in January (it was 17 degrees and snowing hard), and otherwise the kids were reasonably pliant.

Kids looking super jazzed about walking in the snow. Image by Amber Gove used with permission.

Today’s lesson: Sharing is caring

Caregivers rotate responsibility for escorting the walking school bus, making scheduling and punctuality (ahem, harder for some of us than others) important. Our bus had around ten families involved at different points of the year and up to 14 kids ranging from age three to 12.

We agreed we needed three adults to manage the journey safely each day, so we eventually settled on a pattern in which each family would cover the same couple slots each week, more or less. In time, we all came to appreciate the broader benefits of our kids building a wider network of caring adults in their neighborhoods, surely one of the most important devices in the urban parent’s toolkit.

“I think it really reinforces an extended sense of community and [a] village approach to parenting,” says Gove. “We’ve got a long list of back-up parents and caregivers we can rely on—which makes parenting in this busy age so much more manageable. We could all use a little more village in our lives.”

The walking schoolbus celebrates the last day of school. Image by Tomas Bonome used with permission.

Pop quiz

The start of the school year, perhaps even Walk to School Day on October 2, could be a great time to start a walking school bus in your community.

Let’s review how they can be beneficial. Can a walking school bus:

A. Give kids (and adults) an opportunity to get healthier through daily exercise;
B. Share dropoff responsibility among caregivers from different families, and help build a sense of community;
C. Provide a practical alternative to driving, thereby reducing carbon emissions and the number of cars involved in the unpredictable school dropoff/pickup environment;
D. Be super fun; or
E. All of the above?

If you said “E,” give yourself a gold star! You’re ready to graduate to a walking school bus of your own.

Top image: A walking school bus in action in Capitol Hill. Image by Amber Gove used with permission.

Automobile supremacy has been written into the legal fabric of the United States for the past century, as government and industry leaders choked public transit and encouraged personal automobiles instead. Recently, University of Iowa law professor Greg Shill wrote a paper detailing how US law subsidizes driving.

“Many of the automobile’s social costs originate in the individual preferences of consumers, but an overlooked amount is encouraged—indeed enforced—by law. Yes, the US is car-dependent by choice. But it is also car-dependent by law,” Shill writes. Eric Jaffe of Sidewalk Labs broke down some examples from Shill’s paper on Twitter.

1. It’s easy to speed in a car

Scooters and e-bikes often have built-in speed limits, but not cars.

2/ Calls for car companies to automatically limit top speeds have been defeated since 1920s, yet by definition, going that top speed would break speeding laws. Meanwhile, low-speed vehicle makers (e.g. e-scooters) are often required by law to restrict speed. (p5)

5/ Even among those 15 states, camera usage is often limited by law. Until 2019, NY state restricted use to NYC school zones, and even THEN only near 140 out of 2,300 zones, making it illegal to use a life-saving device in 94% of NYC (and 100% of upstate) school areas. (p11)

Transit improvements and infrastructure changes that would cause car delay are literally illegal in some jurisdictions.

3/ In some places, adding bus lanes, carpool lanes, or light rail is “expressly prohibited by law” or at least subject to legal assault. (pg5) That was long true in California under CEQA, which considered transit or crosswalks as environmentally damaging (!) because of car delay.

In Montgomery County in 2018, local police called people who were hit and killed by drivers “lazy” for not being in the sidewalk, but this type of framing where the person hit is at fault isn’t an isolated incident. Mainstream media organizations frequently refer to all car crashes as “accidents,” implying that the driver isn’t responsible, and focus on the delay it will cause drivers.

6/ The FHWA traffic manual (MUTCD) does not require markings to define a crosswalk; the presence of an intersection creates one. Yet police will routinely note when a pedestrian was “not in a marked crosswalk,” a misunderstanding that insulates drivers from liability. (p19)

4. Car-centric policies are good for the environment, says the car lobby

The car lobby has come up with all kinds of ways to get car-centric policies enshrined by law as somehow being better for the environment.

9/ Federal law makes funding for state energy conservation plans conditional on adopting rules that allow right turns on red. Yet there’s little evidence right turns on red reduce emissions, and lots of evidence connecting them with higher crash, injury, and death rates. (p37)

Besides contributing to pollution, these policies have bad outcomes for vulnerable road users.

15/ No coincidence that the share of “light trucks” has soared from 20% in 1976 to 69% of market today. The upshot, of course, is that SUVs are much worse for pedestrian safety: you’re 3.4x more likely to be killed if hit by an SUV vs. a car. (p58)

In most zoning codes, space for cars is written into requirements, which drives up the cost of housing and reduces space for housing and other amenities. This comes at the expense of transit. As Shill writes, “The decision to write blank checks for free roads while starving transit of resources has distorted the transportation market for generations.”

12/ Parking minimums significantly raise the cost of development in cities - regardless of whether a tenant wants or needs a space - adding 12.5-38% (!) to housing unit costs. One study put a parking spot at $200/month more in rent, and $43k more in condo asking price. (p51)

Happily, while apartment buildings still include a “free” parking space with the cost of rent, there are efforts to “unbundle” parking from rent costs in DC. That way drivers have a better sense of the actual cost of storing their car, and people who don’t drive aren’t forced to subsidize the habit of people who do.

That’s not an exaggeration: The Freakonomics podcast called killing a pedestrian with a car the “perfect crime.” That’s because if you live in New York or many other places in the US, it’s rare for drivers to be punished for hitting and killing someone. Police officers often only hear the side of the driver, and as we mentioned above, they often favor drivers.

19/ US criminal law makes it very hard to find drivers liable in pedestrian / bike fatalities. Contra the Netherlands, where drivers are automatically assumed to be 50% liable if the victim is over 14, with the remaining 50% determined by fault. (p71)

Legal penalties tend to be more severe for people who take transit, even for arguably more minor infractions. That’s why decriminalizing fare evasion is an important step to undoing some of that “driver privilege.”

20/ “Ironically, delaying 50 bus passengers by temporarily parking in the bus lane is punishable by ticket, but boarding that same bus with an expired pass can trigger jail time.” (p74)

So why does all this matter? As Shill writes, “motor vehicles are now the leading killer of children and the top producer of greenhouse gases. They rack up trillions of dollars in direct and indirect costs annually, and the most vulnerable—the elderly, the poor, people of color, and people with disabilities—pay the steepest price. The appeal of cars’ convenience and the lack of meaningful alternatives has created a public health catastrophe.”

Many other countries have built places centered around transit, bicycling, and walking. As the climate crisis worsens, we need to undo the subsidies and other privileges we’ve granted to cars and drivers, and replace them with systems that are better for the planet and all its people.

Readers: What did we miss? In what other ways does US law incentivize driving?

]]>Tue, 20 Aug 2019 15:15:00 +0000Julie Strupp (Managing Editor)Here’s what you should do if you get into a bicycle crashhttps://ggwash.org/view/73494/heres-what-you-should-do-if-you-get-into-a-bicycle-crash
https://ggwash.org/view/73494/heres-what-you-should-do-if-you-get-into-a-bicycle-crash

This article was first published on April 6, 2017. This information is important to have, so we’re sharing it again.

If you get into a bike crash, call 911. Try to get a police report, and note details about the officer making the report. Take photos. Also, avoid getting angry as best you can, and don’t downplay the potential severity of your injury.

But even if you’ve thought it through (or you read Megan’s guide), pulling all that information out can be difficult even on the best of days. Luckily, the Washington Area Bicyclist Association has your back with these handy cards with reminders of the things that are most essential.

The inside panel of the card reminds riders to get contact or insurance information from anyone at the scene, a police report and the info of the officer in charge, and photos. It also urges against trying to “shake it off” and says “anger is natural, but try to keep a level head.” On the back, there’s WABA contact info and an invitation to fill out the agency’s crash tracker.

“This is all info that’s available in various forms all over the web, but none of that is necessarily something you have in your pocket,” said Colin Browne, WABA’s communications coordinator. “We wanted something that’s clear and easy to process even if you’re kind of rattled. The recommendations are about making sure people are taking care of themselves. There’s not always one right thing to do, but these are a couple of good things to know.”

Do you have anything to add to WABA’s basic list? Any experiences that have taught you the value of a particular piece of information? Tell us in the comments.

The DC Department of Transformation—not to be confused with the District Department of Transportation—is helping cyclists and pedestrians one plunger, or traffic cone, or ad hoc handstand, at a time. What started off as a Twitter account aimed at rectifying problems with city infrastructure, @DCDOTRA has grown into a prime example of tactical urbanism. And the great thing is: Anyone can participate.

I talked to the founder of the account (who will remain anonymous by their request—many of their projects are not technically legal) about what DC DOTRA is doing, how tactical urbanism can help make DC safer for people walking and bicycling, and how citizen-led initiatives are crucial to improving urban environments.

What is The DC Department of Transformation?

DCDOTRA: The Department of Transformation is an imaginary city department that empowers citizens to think beyond the structures of our city government. We have the capability to have a direct impact on our neighborhoods and make ourselves safer. If there’s a situation in which you feel unsafe, you have every right to fix it yourself.

That’s my philosophy rooted in the idea that we have the physical right to the city and do things with it as we see fit. I know that’s a controversial idea, but I love poking that dragon. That’s why I created this Twitter account: To inspire people to say, “I can do that, it’s really easy to transform this experience [biking, walking, or living in the city] by doing something [about the problems].”

Do people confuse you for the District Department of Transportation (DDOT)?

DCDOTRA: What’s funny is that when I made it, I was like, “I have to make it really wacky so that if people try to tag me in it, they’d know it’s not a real department.” But, people still tag me in stuff, and they still message me saying, “Hey, can we get some traffic control here?” and I’ve taken to saying “Control it yourself, or fix it yourself,” but then I actually guide them towards DDOT.

What sort of physical “fixes” do you do?

DCDOTRA: Well, we don’t do anything permanent, at least not yet. My next project might be permanent, but it’s hard to do these projects without any money. I rely totally on the charity of people coming to me and saying, “I have the materials to do this.” Like all the traffic cones I have, I’ve found on the street, abandoned outside of construction sites, or along trails. So I’m reusing these things, too.

I am inspired by the San Francisco Department of Transformation. They were doing a project in Golden Gate Park—sometime in 2012 or 2013—on an off ramp and there was a bike lane with a buffer, but since it was so wide, cars would drift into the bike lane without caring. So what they did was they got 50-60 plungers and put them up as a buffer. Within a day, the San Francisco Department of Transportation said “we’re gonna install flexiposts.” They were ashamed. I thought that was so powerful. I was so tired of being angry at cars, and yelling at drivers and I wanted to channel my anger at something more productive that would radicalize more people.

Image by DCDOTRA used with permission.

One of the first things that we did was on 14th and U Street where we did a human protected bike lane. I’ve biked thousands of miles and I’m terrified to bike on 14th Street, even though it has a bike lane. I got 35 people to come out in the pouring rain. People were willing to stand in the rain to protect a bike lane! There was also the thing in NoMa where contractors didn’t repaint the bike lane. So, one of our directors went around looking for loose stop-its and put them out in the middle of the road. People were upset that we did that. That caused DDOT to make them paint the bike lanes.

One of the biggest things that we’ve done are the handstands. There’s one at 15th and Massachusetts and another one at 15th and U. I was inspired by some handstands that I saw in Copenhagen. It was a wooden structure secured down with sand bags. I also see people using it all the time. The bottom bar is grey now because of how many people are using it!

A lot of tactical urbanists want to get rid of cars. How do you feel about them?

DCDOTRA: I’m obviously very anti-car. I tweet “ban cars” all the time. I think there is a way to get to a city with less cars, but a lot of that is shattering away at the facade of car culture. When I say, “Ban all cars,” in some ways I’m being serious, in others I’m being facetious and trying to scare people a little bit; make them say, “Woah, there’s a world in which we don’t need cars?” Well, yes there is a world in which we don’t need cars!

It’s also a climate change issue. We have no choice but to transition away from cars. Even electric cars contribute to climate change. A lot of public health issues come from cars. For me, pedestrianism is true democracy. Respecting each other’s bodies and space; there’s acceptance of people in that. It’s breaking away from being isolated in cars.

What specific things about DC make DCDOTRA important for the way that DC is growing and changing?

DCDOTRA: Cars are a money pit and my focus is on equity. With climate change coming another worry of mine is gas shortages. Working class people would be really affected by a gas shortage. If we can anticipate that and transition into a more eco-friendly way of life, then we can mitigate that long-term shock. A big revolution is also e-bikes.

Another joke that I have is that anyone can be a director [of DCDOTRA]. Last year in Anacostia, there was a bus stop without an overhang. People would bring chairs and it became a thing until they were removed. Another one of our directors painted his own crosswalk in Ward 8 in order to demand and call attention to the issue.

What do you have planned for the future?

DCDOTRA: I have to turn up the heat! But, I can’t just replace a function entirely. I’m not trying to do what DDOT can do, I’m trying to enhance and raise the bar in terms of thinking about bike infrastructure.

Often when I do these projects, a new piece of information is exposed to me. Anonymous DDOT staffers told me that they can’t drill anything into the asphalt that isn’t flexible because of federal regulations. That illuminates to me that these handstands are things we have to do on our own. Tactical urbanism is something that sprouts from the city.

When Sam Zimbabwe left to head Seattle’s Department of Transportation, he left some big shoes to fill. That position will now go to Ellen Jones, who is currently Deputy Executive Director of the Downtown DC Business Improvement District and previously headed up the Washington Area Bicyclist Association.

Jeff Marootian, head of the District Department of Transportation (DDOT), announced the move to DDOT staff Tuesday morning and spoke with Greater Greater Washington about what the choice means for the agency.

Jones has a long history in transportation, begining at the Federal Highway Administration. She headed up WABA until 2004, when she moved to the BID to oversee transportation issues, rising to Deputy Executive Director last year.

I didn’t work with her during her WABA days, but at the BID she has been a continual supporter of helping people get to and from downtown by Metro, bus, bike, walking, and other sustainable modes of transportation. She bicycles to work regularly and was until recently the Ward 3 representative and often chair of the Bicycle Advisory Council, on whose behalf she often testified at the DC Council about the need for faster progress on building a network of connected bikeways.

Jones also headed up DCST when it used to be housed at the DowntownDC BID and focused on Circulator. She was instrumental in planning for Circulator expansion during the system’s earlier years. In 2017, DCST broadened its focus and moved to its current structure of being managed by GGWash; Jones is in a sense my immediate predecessor as DCST Executive Director.

Fortunately, the Downtown BID’s transportation expertise remains strong as Galin Brooks, until recently Vice President of Planning and Economic Development at the NoMA BID, just started as Director of Infrastructure for DowntownDC.

Jones will be the second-ever Chief Project Delivery Officer

The position of Chief Project Delivery Officer at DDOT is itself pretty new. The heads of engineering, planning, traffic signals, etc. used to all report to the Director. But there was not enough coordination between the groups, which were even in different buildings. Planners would engage communities to devise changes to a street and then “throw it over the wall,” as some said, to engineers who would then try to design it. The planners would say the engineers weren’t trying to stay faithful to their vision. The engineers would say what the planners designed isn’t technically feasible.

A DDOT reorganization in 2014 created a new C-level tier in the DDOT org structure. The Chief Administrative Officer (Dorinda Floyd) oversees agency administration. The Chief Performance Officer (John Thomas) monitors performance measurement, IT, and customer service. The Chief Operations Officer (Howard Ways) has parking, Urban Forestry (street trees), public space permitting, maintenance, and so on. And a new position, the Chief of External Affairs (Dena Iverson) includes policy, media relations, community engagement, and the new Vision Zero office.

But the executive overseeing all of the construction and road changes and all of that is the Chief Product Delivery Officer. Sam Zimbabwe, previously head of planning, was promoted to be the agency’s first and thus far only CPDO. He personally had a strong hand in all of the major decisions DDOT made about visible infrastructure changes. He both pushed the agency forward and at times clashed with activists, who wanted to see more progress while Zimbabwe wanted to back up decisions with more firm studies.

The new Chief Project Delivery Officer’s team can push good decision-making at DDOT

According to Marootian, he will be strengthening the CPDO’s team so that no one person has to personally manage everything that’s going on. There will now be a Deputy Chief Project Delivery Officer, Amanda Stout, who I’ve worked with and is terrific. In addition, Marootian said, they will add four positions for Associate Chief Project Delivery Officers who will take on individual projects and shepherd them from start to finish, ensuring that the decisions reflect the agency’s prorities and handling public engagement, communications, and so forth.

This seems like a promising direction. Marootian has brought in a core team of people who are really pushing the agency’s priorities around safety and Vision Zero, connected networks for walking and biking, faster and more reliable bus service, and more. Sometimes DDOT seems unpredictable because there are high-priority projects those folks are watching closely and then other projects where they might not be.

The new set of ACPDOs could be similar to the tech company Product Manager job which I held at two tech companies when I worked in Silicon Valley. A PM doesn’t build the software or design the graphics or review the legal questions or send out the marketing copy, but they coordinate the efforts of all of those. They ensure the product has a coherent vision and that it aligns with the company’s larger strategy.

Similarly, it seems that Jones, Stout, and the ACPDOs could help the engineers do their jobs, the planners do their jobs, the traffic signal timing experts do theirs, etc. while ensuring that all of those efforts are aligned with the agency’s goals.

Of course, this structure wouldn’t give us good projects if the agency director doesn’t have the right priorities, which means ensuring that whenever there’s a change in mayor or agency director, that person prioritizes DC’s goals as set out in MoveDC, Sustainable DC, and other plans, particularly the goal of reaching 50% of trips being by transit and 25% by walk and bike, which means fewer by car. Most if not all top DDOT executives currently support these goals, but that could always change.

Meanwhile, hiring a bicycle advocate and setting up a team to help her keep the agency on track seems promising. We’ll need to watch and give encouragement and, when needed, critiques as this new setup evolves.

Top image: Jones (right) on a 2018 panel with (left to right) current WABA Executive Director Greg Billing, DDOT Director Jeff Marootian, and Veronica Davis of Nspiregreen. Image by DDOT.

On July 30, the Montgomery County Council advanced two long-awaited Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects on Route 355 and Veirs Mill Road to the next stage of engineering. However, the Council put off selecting a preferred design for BRT on Route 355, and it’s not clear when it will decide.

Instead of choosing a design, the Montgomery County Department of Transportation plans to ask the private sector for recommendations for Route 355 BRT. Verbally though, staff indicated that their focus will be on dedicated median BRT lanes, which are considered the highest standard for this type of bus project.

Veirs Mill and Route 355 (part of which includes Rockville Pike) are two of three priority corridors for Montgomery County’s planned 82-mile BRT network, passed in 2013 with the support of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, Sierra Club, and other community members. The first BRT line along the Route 29 corridor is currently under construction. BRT is expected to cut transit commute times, decrease carbon emissions, improve social mobility, and spur economic development.

Route 355 runs north-to-south from Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda to Frederick. The proposed BRT route would run 22 miles from downtown Bethesda to Clarksburg, and offer more frequent, reliable, comfortable, and convenient service than local bus routes. Station features will include real-time transit information and level boarding which makes things easier for people with mobility challenges, as well as real-time off-board fare payment and all-door boarding which speed up travel.

Veirs Mill cuts east-west from Wheaton to Rockville, and current bus routes along the corridor have some of the highest ridership of any bus line in Maryland. The preferred design for Veirs Mill BRT was selected in June 2017. The design would create queue jumps at 12 BRT stops between Rockville and Wheaton.

Last year, the county approved $3 million for preliminary engineering and $4 million for the final design of the Veirs Mill preferred concept. That funding was scheduled to go into effect in July 2022, five years after the preferred design was selected. Councilmember Hans Riemer recommended a faster schedule, which is why funding for Veirs Mill’s next stage was moved to this summer.

What were the design options for Route 355?

The BRT design options for the Route 355 BRT included:

Alternative A, which would put BRT vehicles in mixed traffic;

Alternative B and B Modified, which is primarily dedicated median BRT lanes; and

Dedicated median lanes are considered the highest standard for BRT, producing better frequency and reliability, which translates into higher ridership. Curb lanes, although dedicated, run a higher risk of other vehicles using the lane for right turns, which slows and delays buses.

Alternatives A and B put BRT in mixed traffic in Clarksburg and Bethesda. Alternative C includes one curb BRT lane, peak direction only, in Bethesda. Both the Planning Board and Coalition for Smarter Growth have recommended dedicated BRT lanes in downtown Bethesda, in addition to dedicated median lanes throughout the rest of the corridor.

Neither Alternative B nor C includes fully built-out median or curb lanes due to right of way considerations. Median lanes require more widening compared to curb lanes, so Alternative B Modified was created to anticipate some of the right of way challenges in Gaithersburg, Rockville, and Germantown. Instead of two median BRT lanes, there would be one median BRT lane that is either reversible or operates in the peak direction only.

Alternative B has the most benefits, but biggest cost

Alternative B wins out on ridership, reliability, and time savings. Alternatives B and B Modified would produce the highest ridership at 9.28 million annual riders, followed by Alternative C at 8.63 million and Alternative A at 7.74 million. Due to its physical separation from traffic, buses in Alternative B would be on-time 87-96% of the time, compared to 83-93% of the time in Alternative C.

However, Alternative B has the highest right of way needs and, subsequently, cost. Alternative B requires 61 acres and Alternative B Modified requires 54 acres. In comparison, Alternative C and A require 39 and 13 acres, respectively. All of the designs fit into the Master Plan right of way, but much of that right of way is not currently available, and not likely to be any time soon.

The needed right of way can be acquired as properties come up for redevelopment, but many property owners – especially those in the Pike District where right of way acquisition costs are highest – aren’t willing to redevelop until BRT is in place. To entice property owners to redevelop, the Planning Board recommends interim streetscape improvements. But will that be enough?

Another way to get around property acquisition costs would be to convert general purpose traffic lanes to BRT lanes, rather than expand the highway. This should be seriously considered because it would speed implementation, cost less, and reduce the future Route 355 crossing distances for pedestrians.

In all, it is estimated that Alternative B would cost $886 million, followed by Alternative B Modified at $820 million, Alternative C at $534 million, and Alternative A at $184 million. Given the concerns about the accuracy of Alternative C’s ridership projects, it could be likely that Alternative B is more cost effective per rider than Alternative C.

Advocates support dedicated BRT lanes, so what happened?

At a hearing on July 16, the public was clear in its support for both Veirs Mill and Route 355 BRT, and for the Route 355 BRT to run in bus-only lanes. Those who made technical recommendations were in favor of two dedicated median BRT lanes, wherever feasible. Survey results from outreach events also confirmed the community’s interest in dedicated lanes.

Dedicated median lanes found support from the Planning Board and the City of Rockville. The City of Gaithersburg supported dedicated curb lanes.

County Executive Marc Elrich wasn’t prepared to recommend a preferred alternative and asked MCDOT staff to solicit the private sector’s opinions on improving travel times, ridership, and reliability, as well as construction best practices and potential public-private business models.

MCDOT agreed and requested that the Council not choose a preferred alternative for Route 355 BRT this summer. Instead, the next stage of engineering would focus on major risk factors and physical design.

Chris Conklin, MCDOT Deputy Director for Transportation Policy, confirmed that the agency is “working in the direction of thinking Alternative B is the one that should be the basis for further exploration.”

In the end, the Council concurred with the executive branch and did not choose an alternative. The request for information is expected to go out later this summer, and responses are expected by the fall.

What’s next for BRT on Route 355?

It’s unclear. There are still many questions that need to be answered. What will the private sector have to say? Will the preliminary engineering process remain transparent and accountable without a recommendation from the Council? When will the Council have a chance to ultimately select a preferred alternative?

This stage of engineering for Route 355’s BRT is estimated to take three years.

Meanwhile, transportation is the number one source of emissions in Maryland, and the environmental impact of transportation will only be worsened if Governor Larry Hogan’s highway widening proposals come to fruition. We need to be shifting away from highway expansion and moving towards growing transit through projects like Montgomery County’s BRT network.

Montgomery County is installing a protected intersection in downtown Silver Spring, the first of its kind on the east coast. It’s an important step toward building streets that are safer for vulnerable road users, like people walking and bicycling.

The intersection, currently under construction, is located at Spring Street and Second Avenue. The Montgomery County Division of Transportation Engineering Twitter account wrote a lengthy explanation of how it works, complete with some great gifs:

Thread:
You may have heard that Montgomery County is getting the first “protected intersection” on the east coast. But what is it? And how does it work?

6/
The corner islands’s primary goal is to slow down drivers turning right. The tightened radius means that drivers turn very slowly. A raised apron allows larger vehicles to turn by mounting it if necessary.

12/
The corner islands also provide queuing space for cyclists turning left. This space allows through cyclists to pass behind the cyclists waiting at the advanced stop line for the green signal. pic.twitter.com/RJG3yyad8e

We first published this article on June 9, 2015. Alas, since it’s still relevant, we’re sharing it again.

Very little has changed over the last 90 years when it comes to traffic safety in DC. Want proof? Take a look at this 1928 traffic report and consider how eerily similar it is to something that could come out today.

Officially called the Annual Report of the Director of Traffic for the District of Columbia, I found this document on Twitter. Here are seven things it says about traffic in 1928 that are still true now:

1. Traffic was getting safer, but was still far from perfect

When the report was published, the number of crashes was rapidly declining. There were 4,138 in 1928, which was a continuation of a downward trend from previous years and was nearly half the number that occurred in 1925 (9,378).

2. Distracted driving was a huge problem

The principle causes for crashes in which the driver was presumably at fault were reckless driving, careless driving, failure to yield, exceeding the speed limit, and defective brakes and steering equipment. Some causes listed for crashes where the pedestrian was at fault include crossing somewhere that wasn’t a crosswalk, crossing at a crosswalk against the signal, playing in the street, and being inattentive to traffic conditions.

Summarily, “it is believed that the majority of accidents are due to inattention on the part of those who drive as well of those who walk. Accidents do not happen; they are caused. It is therefore the duty of every driver and every pedestrian to exercise the greatest care in order to prevent accidents.”

3. Street design made a big difference

The streets with the most crashes in the two years before the report were 14th Street NW, Pennsylvania Avenue, M Street, and 16th Street. 14th Street, 16th Street and Massachusetts Avenue all saw precipitous drops in crashes due to the implementation of stop signs and traffic signals.

4. A lot of people died in traffic violence

There were 89 traffic fatalities in 1928, an uptick from the 78 in 1927 but about the same as the 86 in 1926. 78 were caused by people driving automobiles, eight by streetcars, two by bicycles (!), and one by motorcycle. The most common cause of fatality in crashes caused by automobiles were automobile-pedestrian crashes, with 40 deaths.

More pedestrians (eight) were killed by streetcars than those who died in automobile-automobile crashes (seven). Children under the age of 14 accounted for seven deaths, and people over 65 accounted for 13. All of the drivers involved in the fatal crashes were male.

5. Prosecution for traffic deaths was rare

In the fatal crashes, the coroner ruled 63 deaths accidental. 15 were held over for grand jury consideration, but 13 ended up being ignored. Of the two drivers tried, one hadn’t concluded when the report came out, and the other was found not guilty.

Short of criminal prosecution, a more common punishment in 1928 was revoking driver’s licenses. 959 driving permits were revoked in 1928, more than half of which were either for driving under the influence of liquor or leaving after colliding. The report concludes that “the cancellation or suspension of operators’ permits is one of the most effective means for bringing about improvement of traffic conditions.”

6. DC wasn’t as bad as many other cities

When it came to number of traffic fatalities, Washington was one of the safer cities. Of the cities as large or with a greater population, it had the lowest fatality rate per 100,000 citizens. Its number was nearly half the fatality rate of Cincinnati, Youngstown, Ohio and Wilmington, Delaware.

Of the more than 42,000 arrests for violating traffic laws in 1928, more than 5,000 were for “parking overtime.”

7. There were endless studies

In his suggestions for the upcoming year, the director requested $5,000 for a traffic study. “Such a survey constitutes one of the outstanding features of a traffic department, and it is necessary that this department be informed regarding the traffic flow of different streets.” He also suggested that the Traffic Act be amended to require the reporting of serious collisions to the police (which to that point was not required) and to change the penalties for the speeding, reckless and intoxicated driving away from mandatory jail time.

The 1920s may have been a different era, BUT these seven points are just as recognizable to traffic safety activists in 2015 as they were 87 years ago. It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Give the report a quick read. Is there anything else that you noticed that you found especially interesting?